Wednesday, April 4, 2012

How did I get here? Confessions of a fanboy!

I don't know when or how it happened but I've developed a serious man-crush on EVE Online. It has slowly been developing over the last couple years because a few things have fallen into place. Well, ok, more than a few things.

Perhaps this will be boring or even a bit of "so what" for you. In fact, it will probably verge on TL;DR. Please hang in there! I think it will be important to know how I got here. Here's a rough timeline of how I became an EVE fanboy.

I stopped playing Everquest. I had started my EVE life a few years prior to this but didn't really play for three years. I was at least smart enough to realize I couldn't be hardcore in two MMO's. There were a number of factors that lead to the decision (fuck you Charsi) but overall I guess I was looking for more. I wanted more control over my game time and wanted more control over how I interacted with players. Don't get me wrong, EQ was fun. I played it for 8 years, 4 accounts, hard core raiding, all that good stuff. But I just wanted more. I always loved how I felt when playing EVE so it was clear where my gaming time was going to go.

I hooked up with an EQ buddy who had first sent me my trial invite, got into his corporation and off to the races we went. We did lots of things. We were focused but not at the same time. That was partially my fault because I wanted to experience all of EVE. We did the mining bit, both ore and ice. We ran some missions. Tooled around in Low Sec where I lost my raven on the gate back to high-sec because I thought I was being smart sitting with the door to safety at my back. Of course, that door was locked. We did wormholes the first day they were out and we learned lots! I like to think that because of the efforts of our corp and one specific pilot that we helped unlock a secret or two of wormholes because I know he was passing on things we learned to the community. Then we went to 0.0. Providence to be exact. I loved the lofty and idealistic goals of NRDS (Not Red Don't Shoot) policy but saw first hand the challenges of not being NBSI (Not Blue Shoot It). At the time there was lots of action in Providence and I got a taste of blood and I wanted more.

I did my research and saw a couple corporations were consistently responsible for the kills in the area. So I did the only rational thing in EVE. I stole a billion isk from my EQ buddy's corp wallet, contacted one of those top corporations, played spy and helped coordinate a strike against my current alliance and then joined the enemy. (To be fair, I did pay back my buddy with a full 1 isk extra. But man the tears were sweet up to that point.) That was a couple years ago. Becoming part of an amazing corporation that has forced me to work on being a better pvp pilot (jury is still out as to if it has actually worked) has been a big factor in the flight to fanboy status.

About a year ago we joined Against ALL Authorities which allowed me to see an amazing series of events across the south from losing almost all our space (/waves from the Dead Alliance) to gaining it back and then some. It also allowed me to experience a large number of situations, events, fleets, and fights than I had before. I can't say yet that I've done it all but I'm a hell of a lot closer than I was a year ago. It's been an incredible time for AAA and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Skill point accrual crossed the point where I now have enough to get into ships that really catch my attention. This has driven the interest in getting them blown up while trying to blow up the rest of you! By the way, I think this is a critical point for CCP to consider as they look at ship balancing and even introduction of new ships. Sure T1 ships can be fun but there is an attraction to having bigger and better bling! Ships and modules are the hooks that drive serious interest (and subscriptions). Don't make all the cool ships so far down the chain that new players can only get to them after years of training. They are heading down that road with Crucible and Inferno.

CCP & Crucible. I can't underestimate how important this expansion has been to my man-crush. First off it re-energized most of EVE and with that came more fleets, more fights, more opportunities to play, more blogs, more podcasts, more tweets, more developer blogs, and so much more I can't list them all. End result was more love for EVE.

Twitter and the community at large has all been energized by Crucible. I decided to start a twitter account and quickly found myself surrounded by others who share the same passion for the game. Most days it's odd if I don't get my dose of daily stats from CCP_Diagoras. I've started to read more blogs too. I keep my eye out for posts from other CCP employees and CSM members. And if that doesn't fill a few hours of my time I can always get involved in a any of the ongoing conversations that are happening right now in real time.

One of those tweets was Jade of Lost In EVE looking for a co-host. I had been toying with a few ideas concerning my own podcast or even looking towards eve-radio as an outlet. I saw the tweet and jumped on it. Hopefully you have all listened to the result of that decision. I find myself just giddy with excitement over this opportunity and it's only thrown more gas on the fanboy fire!

As if letting people listen to my opinion wasn't enough I decided to start a blog. Again, something I had been thinking about for a while. Really not much else to say here. (Well, maybe thanks for getting this far!)

So what does it all mean? Why outline all this? I can assure you it's more than just me blabbing about who I am. I'm hoping there is some commonality in who I am and who you are because I have a desire to do more. I want to promote this game. I want to be part of the success. And I hope you do too. In other words, how can we help?